Power Yoga Teacher Impresses Us in Her Pretty Practice (video)

If you’re into tricks and treats feast your ogley eyes on Meghan Currie, a Power Yoga teacher from Canada who dazzles us with her yoga skillz, in her skivvies. It’s part acro, part yoga, part hooping, part dance, part slithering, part performance art and part yogatainment. Enjoy.

Yoga Sutra Pada 1 Sutra 33
By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness.

I love how she receives such little attention from those around her. “Look at me the girl in the red dress doing a full split on the sidewalk or arm balance in Manhattan” And little more than a glance from almost everyone who walks by-gotta love New Yorkers. I bet the pictures are amazing.

Meghan is definitely one of the most competent teachers I have ever run across. She has many variations on poses and provides some really novel ways to get into the hardest arm balances and inversions. She’s not scared to borrow from other disciples either, which I think is good.

Unfortunately she also crosses back and forth across the line between being quirky and endearing and being strange (or in her own words, ‘awkward’). I think if she would drop the sexual innuendo she’d be a better yogi for it, because there’s clearly a lack of mental discipline there.

Is it yoga? I can’t tell. I’ve decided that I can’t tell much about someone’s practice by looking at their style and their asana work. I was in a class for a while with a woman with some significant movement limits. Her warrior 1 didn’t look a whole lot different than her tadasana. She never spoke – and it was a chatty class. I watched her one night and noticed a look on her face that I would describe as bliss. And she always looked like that. Totally focused, totally into it. I started thinking she might have the strongest practice in the group. And then I thought, The showboat gumby girls might have a very deep practice, too.

Wow, I have seen some pole dancers who could put this lady to SHAME. She might try indoor work!

Robert the photographer was over at Elephant Journal promoting himself and her. Is Yoga Dork starved for material? Or we are witnessing a move toward some kind of cross-branding of the two sites?

What’s new about this? It’s been on You Tube, yes? It seems like the yoga lumpen-glitterati of New York likes to give itself a lot of free air time!

Hope you’re getting a percentage of the gross.

In the meantime, what about reporting on yoga in Iowa or in some other little known place outside the reach of the Big City fashion and modeling industry?

Or come here to Washington DC and report on yoga for black women who live “across the river” in Anacostia. Big story, actually. Whether the reign of Skinny White Girl yoga may be ending? It’s certainly coming under siege of late.

This fashion-related yoga meme isn’t even that interesting anymore. It’s just another Marilyn Monroe face on a Campbell soup can.

Comparing this gauzy interpretation and manipulation of photographic/cinematographic images to those of the late Andy Warhol, actually gives this art a timeless interpretation it does not yet deserve …

You fancy that you have a following of sorts with this site? So why not do something useful?

Here’s one idea – help organize the campaign to put a broader and more diverse set of faces and bodies on the cover of Yoga Journal.

The issue has been simmering for years, and there’s been zero movement, and we all know why, of course.

Look at who the mainstream yoga market is: Aging White Baby Boomers wanting to look and feel more youthful. Plus, hotshot White female professionals. Both groups part of the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, known in the trade as LOHAS. Elite, affluent, pseudo-liberal, and “feminist” in an utterly self-serving NIMBY way.

So do these affluent white women really want to see Black and Latina women — or worse Men, or people who don’t have perfect bods – on the cover of Yoga Journal?

They don’t, you have to MAKE them. And when they won’t, you picket the magazines offices and SHAME their stupid asses into it. And you’d be surprised, even some of the top staff people there would applaud?

That’s just one small idea. In the event that Yoga Dork is really more than the Carson Tree Pose.

This industry needs pushing, cajoling, shaming, and reforming – as well as celebrating – and at some point you’re either part of the solution – or part of the problem.

Thank- you for voicing this. All these videos out there with uber-bendy people performing these poses has been a real issue for me. As a long-time yoga instructor it frustrates me to see this type of yoga shared around the internet as something to aspire to.

While it is neat to see the body do stuff like that, I feel this emphasis on the bendy body and gymnastics type poses does a disservice to yoga in general. Imagine if the same amount of effort put into accomplishing these acrobatic-type poses was put into working on ourselves, our relationships, etc? Yes, let’s move away from this mainstream, celebration of the young bendy body and broaden the awareness of yoga as something beyond just doing cool stuff with our bodies.

2.) If you deleted the first few paragraphs of that blog it might come across as lucid. However, replacing one type of crazy with a different type of crazy is still crazy. It seems to me that for people’s who’s understanding of the world is built up by New Age BS, that once they realize it’s BS, lack the ability to replace the BS with rationality, and so go find a different type of BS.

I’m a scientist. It ain’t perfect, but it’s better than lurching from one made-up belief system to another, because it’s better to be skeptical and uncertain. There was a really smart comment on this blog from someone on the Anusara story about how glass half-empty people were necessary because they were good critical thinkers. New age spirituality has too many, “the glass is full,” people for sure.

I am a 40 something yogi who is blessed to live in the beautiful city of Vancouver British Columbia, where Meghan teaches. I can tell you as someone who is a little over my super bendy prime (well, I try anyhow), that Meghan’s classes are lovely and suited to all levels. I do not get a sexual vibe from her, there is non-asana component to her classes with meditation and breathing, and her sequencing is sophisticated. Yes, she may be a bit awkward, as she calls herself. But really, she is super awesome human being who happens to practice a lot and is particularly gifted. Folks shouldn’t be so judgmental and just be open to the beauty.

Perhaps my experience has been a bit different, but I would like to share some of the things that I heard Meghan say:

1. ‘F*ck’.
2. “‘Sh*t’ isn’t a swear word.”
3. “Boobs aren’t nudity.” (and she definitely doesn’t believe this one, she’s super-afraid of having an errant mammary)
4. Joking abut getting high off the vibrations of people smoking weed.
5. Having vodka shots before the class to build the inner fire.
6 .Talking about her ‘bush’ as a double entendre.
7. Joking that her henna-stained hands look like she, “jacked off a carrot.”
8. Stating that she wants to make a movie about men having yogasms. Again, coached as a double entendre.
9. Talking about ‘dirty’ movies that she watches.

If Meghan Currie were a male yogi instructor and said the things she says, he would be creep-shamed into oblivion. Similarly, if she were a beautiful woman, she would be mercilessly lampooned. However, she gets away with it because she role-plays a mischievous pixie very well. Meghan does seem to be easy to empathize with, but it’s still a double standard.

For what it’s worth, I do think the time-lapse videos are inspiring and artsy. She also has some nice instructional videos over at MyYogaOnline, that are worth checking. If you see me in one of Meghan’s classes though, I’ll be disguised in drag, so that I can be one of the girls. Yoga should be fun, not ‘awkward.’

VisionQuest, my dear, you are far too reflexive in your eagerness to criticize. If Ms. Currie is sponsored by lulu still, they aren’t getting their monies’ worth out of her.

Wow, she is AMAZING. Totally inspiring to dive deeper into a yoga practice. Wow. I also love that the NYPD cop car almost stopped her from doing yoga – but what’s he going to say? “You’re not allowed to be doing yoga there, ma’am.” This is great stuff! Love it!

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